Was Anglo-Saxon England. . .

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Wealthy before the Norman Conquest, in comparison to Latin Europe? That is, France, Spain, Italy, Flanders and Germany.
 
For what it's worth I remember reading (many years ago) that Anglo-Saxon England was the wealthiest country in the world, on a per capita basis. There were certainly other polities that were richer in an absolute sense - France, the Byzantine Empire, etc - but these all had much larger populations.

It's certainly not improbable when you remember the huge sums of money raised either to fight the Vikings or pay them off. There are also the many hoards of treasure found in England - most notably the Staffordshire Hoard from a few years ago. I'm not aware of a comparable number of hoards being found elsewhere in Europe (albeit this may be pure ignorance on my part!).

As a last point I've also seen it claimed that it was wealth looted from England that paid for the building of the Gothic cathedrals of Northern France, though I'm not sure if this would be easy to prove.
 
I strongly doubt that pre-norman England had been so rich.

Being on the main trade axis and being fertile and rich in metals was the key to being rich in the medieval ages.

England was a peripheral country, was reasonably fertile and was rich in tin. This made it a reasonably rich country, not the richest.

On a per capital basis, Italy was richer because it turned itself into the backbone of trade between Europe and the East.
 
It had the wool trade. A very efficent government that had records in the venacular (started by Alfred) and also strong trade ties to Scandanavia and Germany. In relative terms a fairly well distributed wealth and stable coinage which was the model for much of Europe.

Also, it was an Anglo Scandinavian country in a real sense. So yeah, it was a rich prize.
 
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